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banazan releases
Nature
Four Songs By Other People
"Twilight Hands" Split
Nature
Banazan, 2006
rating: 3.5/5
reviewer: w.c.
Like the old tapes of Lou Barlow, Bee Thousand-era
Guided by Voices, or early Beck, Scotland's Alex Botten (who
aside from tertiary friends, occasionally hanging out and
pitching, is sole member of Thee Moths) sounds as if he's been
recording every moment of his life and miraculously whittled the
best parts into 50 minutes. On first impression, it's as though
all the sounds making up the disc were tossed in the air and
presented to us exactly how they fell on the ground. Not long
into the album, however, it becomes apparent that editing is
everything; there is a brain, hard at work, making decisions, and
everything is in its correct place. Melodies radiate in the
ambient noise that surrounds them and throw-away pieces are
strategically placed to bring a living, breathing identity to the
album. Its sum is greater than its parts, and in the end Nature
makes the most sense as one large composition.
Unlike Barlow and Pollard, who can't help but pour out catchy
hooks during most of their waking hours, Alex Botten is about as
interested in songs as he is the sounds of birds in springtime.
When they do occur, Botten's songs are beautifully simplistic
tunes, played with the delicacy and self-awareness of The
Microphones. But songs are just part of a day in the life of Thee
Moths and are represented as such in the grand scheme of Nature's
lo-fi sound collage. The rest of the time is spent capturing
sounds of the outdoors, making glitchy noise experiments, and
fucking with sampled drum beats. Even the sound of wind
distorting in a microphone is not too mundane for Botten's
palette, and the integrity that he treats these otherwise
negligible noises with is remarkable. Nature's
inconsequential and most impressive moments are on the same
playing field, and mid-way through album, the two become
indistinguishable.
Thee Moths seemingly use the same process and achieve the effect
of a scrapbook. As opposed to diary entry, trying to solve a
problem or spilling its guts out, scrapbooking takes a more
subdued reflection of life. Just as cutting and pasting can give
someone the feeling of individuality after being a corporate
drone for 40 hours a week, Alex Botten takes the sounds from his
life and turns them into a unique, understated sonic universe. Nature
doesn't have an obvious narrative so much as it portrays
fragments and nostalgia from the life of its owner. In an age of
digitally pristine self-production, its Cinéma vérité style
pacing of reality is a refreshing throwback to a time with less
sensory stimuli.
From Tiny Mix Tapes
Thee Moths Portasound
for the No Longer Around EP (Craftmore Mill)
Thee Moths Nature (Banazan Records)
I could and perhaps should devote an entire reviews section to
the releases of Alex Botten/a.k.a. Thee Moths such is the
regularity with which he seems to produce consistently appealing
and diverse records. This year there's already been new music
from his DJ Wrong Homer, Explosions and Screaming, and Senor
Citizen guises. But I've chosen to concentrate on these releases
by his masthead project which I was first introduced to when I
got my mits on The Need cassette which was released by Victory
Garden a couple of years back.
The Portasound for the No Longer Around EP (with its cheeky
lofi-referencing title) tells the story of a relationship
breakdown over three songs: 1. Beginning, 2. Middle, and 3. End.
The lyrics almost embarrassing to listen to due to their frank
nature are similarly stripped to their bare essence. Softly
spoken accusations backed up by simple beats and a 50p melodica
dont help to shift the sensation that you're reading a highly
personal letter that's addressed to someone else. Rewarding, if
thoroughly uncomfortable listening.
Nature on the pretty smart US label Banazan sees an attempt to
bring together the various different styles that Thee Moths has
spanned over the last-however-many-years. Opening with the hushed
Awake! Awake! with its "cast aside/your need to hide"
refrain backed by recordings of yachts and birdsong, it's quickly
chased by You Fucking Little Shits in which there does actually
appear to be an acoustic lament going on only its buried by a
clattering repetitive electronic sampled beat. Natures success is
that it manages to fit songs like You Shitting Little Fucks (sic)
intense, almost housey sounding rhythms alongside melancholic
ditties like Do Not Be Ashamed (which has some gorgeous
melodies), without the album sounding in-cohesive or patchy. On
the contrary: the experimentation and the songs sound perfectly
natural in this context. Field recordings of Brighton and cut up
sounds roll perfectly along with the catchy chorus of This Is My
Time. You Are a Great Wave sums up my favourite things about Thee
Moths songs: beautifully uplifting but still vulnerable. These
are songs that you know will be there for you.
From Feral Debris
'zine
Thee Moths Nature
(Banazan)
Thee Moths has seen many incarnations over the years. On this
outing, Alex Botten pretty much does things himself, enlisting
help as he sees fit. The resulting cavalcade of sonic energy
defies description (as before) but does come together when it
matters most.
From Aiding and Abetting
Thee Moths
Nature Banazan Records
Let me set the scene. Imagine you are sitting in a lightly wooded forest of deciduous trees swollen with summer leaves. The sun is at your left, slowly drifting behind a hill, always meshed in layers of verdant foliage. To your right, a gentle slope winding down to a large, warm lake. The blue sky blows a slight breeze. Is that music you hear? Or just bird song and rush-hour traffic?
Not only is this a good description of the grounds surrounding my palatial mansion, it also lends a little meat to my review of the new Thee Moths record.
This is the kind of-well, almost music-that lends itself to sitting around in the summer shade, though I wouldn't try to nap. When should one listen to Nature? Listen when you want to be pleasantly agitated by esoteric noise.
Basically, it comes down to succulent loop glitches, made with care for mysterious and tragic reasons. The emotion of a powerful pop song is retained, but the musical structure becomes totally unrecognizable. So much so, that the record begins to sound like it should be full of pop, but instead has been torn apart or perhaps captured before it can properly materialize.
This incomplete or perhaps deconstructed format comes off, for me, as charmingly adolescent, vulnerable, etcetera. Occasionally, the album's acoustic intrusions even create glowing musical warmth. Passionate vocals question paradoxical nature of the electronic music's mechanized romanticism. Oh now I get it, Nature.
These, "mind-forged manacles" of synthesizers sometimes combine with equally sinister repetitions of bizarrely transfigured bird calls. This can be fairly haunting.
A word of caution: this is not good driving music. Fans of ultra-slick pop songs and smooth dance beats should probably stay away. Otherwise, hunt down a copy and decide for yourself if this is music or just noise.
Thee Moths 'Nature'
Alex Botten, who is Thee Moths, probably would agree with the proposition that music is just organized noise. Certainly, he spends much of his time during Thee Moths' album Nature trying to organize noise. The title is apt. Although at some point on about half the tracks Botten picks up an acoustic guitar or a cheap keyboard and plays a simple chord or two to accompany his murmured singing of folk-like songs, for the most part Nature is a sort of field recording in which the artist is more interested in capturing the sounds of birds, the atmosphere around his hometown of Dundee, Scotland, and various percussive elements. When he captures something with a beat, he is liable to loop that sound and repeat it for a while, then let it become irregular, or cut it up randomly. Even when he's just using the sounds of the outdoors, the recording sometimes seems to have been made with a microphone that had a faulty intermittent signal. The result is perhaps better described as a sonic art experiment than as a collection of musical tracks, even though Botten keeps reappearing with his little songs, only to disappear again in the din. It all may be taken it as a conceptual work, but be prepared when someone asks if there's something wrong with the CD player.
William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Thee Moths 'Nature' - Rating 78%
It's a bitch to review an album like Nature. Laptoppers, they're difficult,
what with their rigorous economy of sounds, their atypical compositions, their
refusal of pop generalizations, etc. Avant-gardists, making music out of dissonance
or conceptual thematics, they're a challenge. But Thee Moths are an unequivocal
bitch to review.
These characters decided, it seems, to have a little pow-wow in which such
conceivable sentiments may have been exchanged: "What if we go Microphones-style,
but more, you know, abstract?" Or, "What if we took the 'pop'
out of glitch pop?" Or "What if we make an album that fucks with
people? You know, one of those albums where during a track like 'Untitled,'
the poor listener stops to make sure the CD isn't scratched, becaues it's
skipping, but actually, the skipping is part of the actual CD recording!"
Sounds like a bunch of real ass-hats, right? The kind who probably find a
great deal of humor in having one song title "You Fucking Little Shits"
and another "You Shitting Little Fucks" on the same album, ha!
Nine times out of ten, yes. Seriously, in principle, I hate the guts out of
artists like that. "Dying" should bounce along on its strummed
chords and I-enjoy-nature-and-drugs vocals, but goddammit, they actually intentionally
fuck it up so that the bit stutters and falls out, then back in, and then
teases you into thinking, "haha, the joke is done." Except then
it's not. But right as you're about to exact verbal and perhaps physical vengeance
on this piece of unarguable turd, it dovetails right into "You are a
Great Wave," which is pretty much the definition of catharsis - a (no
wonder!) wave of glorious feedback noise engulfing a feeble background drum
beat in layered throes, and then dissipating into a textbook case of Microphones
(post-It Was Hot...) weird-pop acoustic guitar-based melody. The unarguable
turd metamorphoses into an inexplicably ingenious and beautiful cocoon, out
of which its following track so gorgeously blooms.
Nature becomes, after relived and similar experiences of the album,
an oddly profound stream of musical collage that punctuates apparent offal
with awfully tender and rending moments. Indeed, the titular theme of nature
is an impressively developed one; preset compositions, fixed sequences, fluid
recordings, are given the shaft in favor of a recording in which errors, skips,
fractures, and downright abrupt mood shifts play and frolick. The naturalism
of its found sounds, its self-defying anti-order, is intellectually interesting
and sonically defamiliarizing. "Hey (excerpt)" doesn't mind detuning
its guitar in the midst of an idyllic melody and then falling apart into broken-up
beats. Somehow, the synthetic ethereal warbling, elongated vocal and harmonic
swoons, and tinny drumming of "P-annne-oh" offsets the ritualistic
chant of the words, a-hem, "the universe / would suck your dick to make
you come." Yeah, I cleared my throat and raised an eyebrow, too.
Ear-candy? No. Fascinating? Well, you've gotta admit...
So Nature is a bitch to review because despite its substantial merits
and moments of loveliness, I don't know who on earth I'd recommend it to.
Probably Phil Elverum devotees would get the first tip, followed by misguided
lovers of The Kallikak Family. But even then, the reasons for recommendation
have more to do with the fact that these people actually enjoy obscurity and
avant-gardism for its own sake (cheeks turning red, I must at least occasionally
count myself among the crowd). How do you recommend an album on the caveat
that it takes time to "figure out," and not much else? How do you
know that the puzzle pieces are supposed to fit together at all?
You don't. You slap it with a rating that at least obliquely indicates the
sublime enjoyment to be found in the skeletal melody (backgrounded by, cleverly,
seagull squawks) of "Land Ho!" Yet you keep it low enough to make
clear that those sublime moments are at best intermittent in an experimental
patchwork that generally appears to have not a clue about what melody is -
the paradox, of course: the melodic moments are all the more striking for
their sudden emergence and tenderness. Finally, you say, "you know what,
I don't know how else to describe this stuff, but by gum it will wallop you
when you least expect it, and make a kind of organic sense." What do
I mean by organic sense?
How's this for the cop out: listen to the highly compelling Nature
and see if you can tell. Hey, at least I didn't use the phrase "sonic
journey," somewhere in there.
Amir Nezar
April 27, 2006
From Coke Machine Glow
Thee
Moths — Nature
You know the old saying about butterfly wings, well why
don’t they say that about moths? Clearly Thee Moths’
“Nature” will have a lasting effect on the world of
ambient music. Spinning circles with manic drum beats and eerie
soundscapes that include field recordings of natural sounds, Thee
Moths reflect on life while in Dundee, Scotland as well as the
more topical subjects of relationships, love, and long journeys.
An intriguing listen, “Nature” is a new entry in the
world of indie pop that most people won’t ever see coming.
J-Sin
From Smother zine
Thee Moths
Nature
(Banzan)
A one-man phenomenon, the fact that Nature has 19 tracks on it should come
as no surprise, any more than A Small Glass Ghost, the previous release from
this band, was in 6 parts spread over 4 12” vinyl sides. And anyone who’s
heard the ‘Folk’ EP wont be taken aback either by the birdsong and
rushing wind on ‘Awake! Awake!’ which opens this CD and precede
some airy melodies and light, and indeed folkish tunes. OK, ‘You Fucking
Little Shits’ does its job in kickstarting the album before ‘Do
not be Ashamed’, a lilting little number which (run for cover) wouldn’t
be out of place on a Reindeer Section album. This sets the pattern for this
collection - pulsating wells of noise ebb and give way to trademark echoey
multi-tracked vocals, the tunes sounding like they’ve been recorded alternately
in the middle of a expansive windy field or within the claustrophobic confines
of a mineshaft. And occasionally, a new element pops in - ‘You Shitting
Little Fucks’ is a lot upbeat than its name suggests, where Chicago house
meets Bristolian glitchcore. It’s difficult listening - at times - for
a more immediate introduction see their ‘Glytchvolk Musique Concrete’
compilation on Pet Piranha - but for the Thee Moths die-hard, ‘Nature’
sees them in the raw. [AM]
????
From Is This Music? issue 21
Thee Moths
“Nature” LP
Banazan Records
I always get a sinister feeling when I think of little stream next to the lower fields. The sound of children playing on those lazy balmy nights nurtured a fear in me. Their fractured distant laughter created an empty sadness in the air. With nothing else to challenge the noise from their young lungs, the evening felt disarmingly potent.
The day had started badly, just like every other. Instead of attempting sleep to escape the guilty feeling of not being able to remember anything from the previous night, I resigned myself to defeat and got up. I badly needed a walk but always felt like a creep aimlessly strolling alone around the village streets, no longer did I have my dog as an excuse. Instead, I sat on the bench next to the garden pond and let the horror of my behaviour drain through my nervous veins. I listened to them take the bins away to be emptied and bitterly dreaded whatever was going to replace the sound of their hard work activity. Pointless reversing lorry alarm. The shubunkin goldfish looked healthy and bored beneath clear still surface of the pool. I wished I could join them.
As small children, we weren’t very good at catching fish from the little stream next to the lower fields, we were always runners up to the older boys. Without the presence of grown-ups, we’d laugh with delight, free to play by our own rules. Games of nonsense and mud fights. The older boys had outgrown all this though. They occupied their attentions with the fish they’d caught. Sometimes they’d fill the gills with sand and pebbles or behead them on their bicycle wheels. One boy liked to pick the eyes out with a stick. The more fiery of our group would protest against the torturing of the fish, but we were always ignored, we were too small and young to issue any real threat to the older boys. They would eventually get bored and cycle off somewhere else, leaving the remnant fish to lie blind or flip desperately on the streamside, all choking through grit-laden gills. We would then search for heavy rocks to end the distress of the fish that were still alive.
As an adult, being a victim of cruelty is my greatest fear. “Nature” by Thee Moths is an album that creates an atmosphere of despair deriving from victimhood. Sounds of birds, wind and water along with cars, malls and sticky compact discs create the audio canvas for Alex Botten’s ethereal soundscape. Making an unrecognisable distorted noise sound pretty or delicate is what Alex does well and on “Nature” this technique is used with great effect to take the listener rolling through an intimate forest of electro-acoustica. Included with the album is a track description sheet shedding light on when/where the songs were recorded which gives the record as a whole a flavour of survival and retrospection. I’m always left with a liberating feeling of hope after I listen to the Thee Moths, thanks to both the writing and recording techniques not obsessing over the predictable gimmicks of structure and production. If you’re going to own a Thee Moths album, make sure it’s this one (or a different one).
Oh, and track 11 “You Are A Great Wave” is the closest Alex Botten will get to writing a Smashing Pumpkins song.
From Rise and Shine
IN TOUCH WITH NATURE
written by gord.
'Nature' is an album that "concern(s) the end of journeys, waking up
from sleep or realising certain things about the cosmic nature" according
to its creator, Alex Botten, who when he records is known as Thee Moths. The
album is full of strange loops, clicks, samples and beats, but Alex is not
a person who is willing to do things the easy way.
A weekend in the summer of 2004, when Alex played gigs with Lucky Dragons, Bobby Birdman and Yacht opened his eyes to a whole new realm of music, as the three artists he was playing with all performed their sets entirely on their laptop computers, "in a way which wasn’t at all boring" states Alex. After many hours spent experimenting with his own laptop, the seeds of 'Nature' were sewn.
"The cut up approach of their music really switched me
on to a load of extra possibilities about sound... things that I had thought
vaguely about in the past but never thought to apply to my songs."
For those not in the know, pervious Thee Moths recordings were for the most
part acoustic, but Alex has always been known to throw in unusual noises and
samples. On 'Nature', he lets the songs take a backseat to his laptop loops.
There are only a few 'songs' in the traditional sense on this nineteen track
album, but the ones that are there are possibly the best he’s written.
'This Is My Time' is a particularly wonderful song, a nylon-strung acoustic plinking along with dreamy vocals, the whole thing shrouded in Nintendo style beeps and staggering drum loops.
Album opener 'Awake! Awake!' features a sample of yachts in Tayport harbour, which had a "rhythmic clanking" about them, according to Alex. The rest of the first track features birds chirping and guest vocals from his girlfriend, Milly.
On 'You Shitting Little Fucks' Alex sampled one of his previous bands, Kosmische, onto a track that frankly made me want to get up and dance. "That one has 'the beat'" says Alex with a smile.
The one thing that stands out about 'Nature' is that there is
not one second of silence, every track flowing seamlessly into the next. It
is definitely an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety, simply
hearing a single track would not do it justice, as all the songs here fit
nicely together, despite their differences, like a kind of sonic patchwork
quilt, and Alex’s songwriting ability shines through again on the latter
portion of 'You Are A Great Wave', sounding like an interesting version of
Bright Eyes.
If you are familiar with previous Thee Moths albums, 'The Need' and 'A Small
Glass Ghost', you will be aware of Alex’s tendencies to mask his vocals,
many lyrics becoming completely unintelligible. Luckily on 'Nature', the vocals
for the most part, are as clear as day. "I think that is more down to
my growing confidence in my own singing more than anything else. Also I think
I am getting better at mixing vocals" explains Alex.
The 'Twenty Beats' mix of the first track (a play on the name of his record
label project, Twenty Bees, perhaps?) turns it into a completely different
song, so much so that he needn’t have told a soul it was a remix, and
we would all be none the wiser.
The sound of rain falling leads us out of that and any noises that were going on stop to leave only Alex’s trusty nylon strung guitar and voice on 'Shallow Blue Ocean'. The sound of a truck rumbling along a road interrupts the musical solitude and introduces us to 'Hey (excerpt)'. Spooky voices reminiscent of children shouting in a swimming pool then lead us on to 'Drums, Then Singing, Then Drums Again' which features the vocal talents of Adrian Orange from Thanksgiving, and his girlfriend, Meghan, as well as Alex and Milly. Alex then shifts back from abstract musician to singer/songwriter for 'Land Ho!' which was a highlight of the last show Alex played in Dundee before setting up home with Milly in Brighton.
Infact, 'Nature' may be the perfect soundtrack for the changes in Alex’s life during the period in which it was recorded. Shifting suddenly from dirty loops and beats to pretty acoustic tunes is a great analogy for the shift Alex made from the dreary Dundee streets to the sunny Brighton seafront. And as closing track 'Alex Versus The Universe' leaves us with the sound of seagulls squawking, you are very much aware that Thee Moths have gone back to nature, but it was a heck of a journey on the way.
Thee
Moths/The Faeries split 7" (Banazan)
Merrily keeping vinyl alive, Banazan has a couple of recent
7" releases, the first being a split between Scotland's Thee
Moths and the Faeries (Miss Banazan, herself!). I sometimes have
a problem with Thee Moths' more psychedelic side that they
frequently show on their full lengths; however, on their more
focused songs found on singles (like this one, for example), I
think they're just terrific. True to Thee Moths form, this song
sits on a fine line in between the Microphones and Elevator,
simultaneously dark and upbeat. On the flip, the Faeries remind
me a lot of Mirah or maybe a slower song by the Melons.
Consisting of just drum machine, guitar and multi-tracked vocals,
this song (about Ruby's cat) could've been about a minute
shorter, but is still nice nonetheless. MTQ=2/2
100 Musicians Answer the Same 10 Questions
Part Twenty-Five: Alex Botten of Thee Moths
instigated by dave heaton
Thee Moths is a (more or less) one-man experimental force, whose recordings are filled with quiet melodies that blend into serious spacing-out, along with field recordings and all sorts of mayhem. Their latest that I know of, Nature (Banazan) is the best of those I've heard, covering all sorts of exciting and unsteady ground while getting closer to...um, nature. Check out their website for sounds and more information.
**************************
What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?
That there are so many new sounds to be heard, so many new talented people to meet and so many things to be expressed. I'm older but not wiser, I get my heart broken time and again and never learn...music pukes that out into the world.
What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?
The feeling that no-one is really listening, that no-one is interested.
What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects, etc).
I'm starting to think about the follow up to Nature, getting a new laptop, putting out a couple of hard to find things as even harder to find CDRs in home made sleeves, mini-tours, some ep's, side projects, masks, tattooing 'Do No Harm' on my left wrist and finding a warm heart.
What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?
I played in the upstairs room of a working mens club in Northampton recently in what felt like 100 degree heat. That made for a rather interesting show. Um, I've recorded on jetty's, in forests, on beaches, in cars, on bikes.....I do a lot of field recording, it all changes the way the music sounds.
In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?
I currently live in Solihull, a cultureless shithole outside Birmingham in the UK. It makes me want to murder people, not write songs. I guess I have to move away!
When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?
I wrote a song called 'Fuck You, Universe' about how I'd had my heart broken yet again. It was a bitter little toe tapper.
As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?
God no!!! I LOVE hearing other people! I keep hoping to find the perfect music that will mean I don't have to make any more! If I find that ultimate artist I'll just stop. Myspace has blown the indie world right open. Check out Sweet Potatoes and Mio Tia and Liger!
Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)
I've been listening to a lot of full on drill and bass, some crazy nintendo-core stuff, glitched up folk music, slabs of oldschool rave.
Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?
Sweet Potatoes (www.myspace.com/jennysongs) - Jenny makes the best music in the world and I love her completely! She is a lovely wonderful person as well. LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!
What's the saddest song you've ever heard?
"Don't Be Crushed" by Hawksley Workman; it reminds me of a trip to Portland, OR that ended with my heart turning to burned up ash. 'You're where all the poets go, you're where all the ashes blow, you're the kind of maker that makes the whole world come true' - sums up how much I loved someone so perfectly.
From Erasing
Clouds